


Hell's Angel

by StellarRequiem



Series: We Caught a Glimpse of Heaven Once [3]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Ghost Rider - Freeform, Go listen to it if you've had any feelings about this series trust me, Read the tags please, There's a song called Killer by Phoebe Bridgers that I blame for this, ghost rider au finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 07:46:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17524697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarRequiem/pseuds/StellarRequiem
Summary: The conclusion ofWe Caught A Glimpse of Heaven Once.





	Hell's Angel

_The Spirit_

_The object of his heart lies old and shrunken in a hospital bed, tubes and wires threaded into her body. Hair like a cloud of white silk threads brittle with age. She is an antique from another time, with a soul so full it's exquisitely bright, with a single dark stain in the middle of it shaped like knowing, the iridescent darks and lights of natural sin pale and shifting in comparison. Even now, the dark spot is the only ugly thing about her. Dark, but not sorrowful, like the failing radiance of her mind._

_Her mind has not been her own for weeks, now. Aging has stolen it from her. Like a locked chest, her memories and personality remain unreachable in its depths._

_The human soul inside the spirit knows that this was never what she wanted. The human soul and its bleeding heart have come here to make it not so for her. To let her go._

_But the dark stain shaped like knowing stares back at him like the mark of a curse—_ this is you, this is your legacy, this is the scene of the crime of loving you. _The knowledge so black, all spirit and no soul, and entirely his fault. She'd sought it for him. And he can see that it is no mortal sin, just a tainted mark left by what she's seen. No product of her actions but a stain contracted from love. That love may have been a sin—her choice to know a sin. But the knowledge itself has no place on a human soul. Is it in this state, then, with that mark on her, that she should be judged?_

_He reaches for the fluttering reflection of her heart, where that radiant soul flickers, and offers her fire. Not enough to burn her clean—her choices remain. The products of them remain. A human soul threaded with love and sin together remains. But he burns away the knowing--the damnation she's witnessed in his name. Just the knowing. Just the stain._ _The understanding of vengeance which now defines him._

_When it's done he pulls away, and turns his attention to the machines forcing her to stay alive. Even as her eyes fly open for the first time in so long, alertness, or something like it, triggered for a moment by the cauterizing of her soul._

_Without understanding, he assumes, she stares into space while he pulls the plug._

_*_

It feels good, whatever changes in those last moments. She's been in a fog for so long, sleepwalking but unable to stand, and then, just for a second, there's clarity. She gasps for a deep breath that won’t quite come, peace washing over her instead. 

Just for a second she glimpses, through closing, smiling eyes, a face she used to know. An angel, maybe, here to lead her. To be beside her as he has been for—

No, no, that's not possible. Her memory _says_ he's been with her, but it's been known to lie of late. How _could_ he have been with her? He died years and years ago. What manner of curse could have brought him back . . . She's sure she doesn’t know. So, yes, an angel. He must be an angel. Or something better—for there’s no terror in seeing him. No fear of God. Just him. Just Frank.

That name may be her last word—she’s not sure if it actually escapes. The world is growing far away. He is far away. He fades from her view as her eyes slide shut, the world replaced in white. 

She lets go.

 

 

 

 


End file.
